|
I would not split between prose and poem. Part of the poem and the prose are Mîm speaking to us "Mîm's speech", while the first paragraph of the poem (16 lines) is a kind of "introduction". That would be my split. And as a matter of fact everything the introduction is telling us must have happened before Mîm utters his speech.
But how long before we do not know. E.g. 'Long paths he had wandered, homeless and cold' had happened most likely a longer time before Mîm stood before his den.
Nonetheless some of what the introduction is telling us must have happened very recently. Or at least the German text does strongly suggest that. Line 12 'His clouded Eyes blinked, still reddened from the smoke;' is without any question describing Mîm when he steps out of his den just in the moment before he uttered his speech. Why would you tell us of a blinking eye in an event long past? If we would not have lines 13 to 15 in between I would think that the smoke that reddened his eyes would have been from his forge-fire. But the lines 13 to 15 make clear that we see Mîm coming out because 'they had,/ at last, his passages cruelly on fire set'.
Now the 'they' from line 13 finds most naturally its reference in 'the fiends' of line 9. If that is the reference, then the events described in lines 7 to 11 had as well most naturally happened recently.
Taken by itself, nothing speaks against that. But then we read Mîm recount what sounds like the same event as in line 7 to 11. This offers two issues:
- Mîm tells us: ‘They smoke me out like a rat, and in mocking mercy they made me run like a wild beast, through burning thorns and heather around my deep home. They laughed as I kicked the hot ash, and the wind snatched away my curses.’ This does not fit the introduction where just before he begins to utter his speech Mîm ‘came … out, sickened and choked.’
- What follows in Mîm’s speech after he is smoked out, is still a long story: he has dealings with his neighbours, he tries and fails to re-create some artefacts. That does as well not fit the introduction where Mîm comes out, with reddened eyes from the smoke and still sickened and choking and immediately speaks to us.
I see 3 possible ways out of this dilemma:
1) The introduction line 7 to 15 and Mîm’s speech do not refer to the same events. This would for the introduction work very well. Since it then tells us things in the right sequence: Mîm’s time of homeless wandering – the ‘fiends’ robbing him and setting his passages on fire – he comes out and speaks. But this seems unlikely since the description especially of the robbery is very similar.
2) Introduction line 7 to 11 refer to the same event as Mîm in his speech, but introduction line 12 to 15 refer to some other independent event that happened recently. In that case we still have some similarities in the two smoking outs but as well enough differences. Issues with this solution are the reference for the ‘they’ in line 13 becomes unclear and the introduction becomes unusual in the order of telling things. First the homeless wandering, then the earlier robbery of his artefacts and then the most recent burning of the passages of Mîm’s den.
3) H. J. Schütz did use a bit too much poetical liberty in the lines 12 to 16 of the introduction. That Schütz was not the most skilled translator when it comes to rhymes is attested in his translation of the two volumes of the Lost Tales: he made line by line translations of the poems in these bocks but didn’t use a single rhyme. That he struggled as well with Mîms Klage seems clear from some unusual rhyming couples and sentences ordered strangely. Some such cases concern us here: In line 10 and 11 the ordering of the sentence is very unusual. The line break between ‘und eine lange Klinge’ and ‘in einer Scheide unterm zerfetzen Mantel’ is acceptable but not very good. He needs it for the end rhyme ‘Dinge’ - ‘Klinge’. But then the ‘, vergiftet auch.’ Is a very unusual addon to the sentence. I would even call it strange. Together with the line break before, it disturbs the reading flow badly and leads to a kind of staccato with in this sentence. Schütz does use it for the rhyming couple ‘auch’ – ‘Rauch’ in lines 11 and 12.
The next couple ‘zuletzt’ – ‘gesetzt’ is as well a bit suspicious. ‘zuletzt’, ‘at last’, is superfluous. It looks like Schütz introduced it to get a rhyme with ‘in Brand gesetzt’.
And the last couple ‘Erbrechen’ – ‘sprechen’ is forced. ‘fast am Erbrechen.’ in line 15 is really bad German. Especially taking the time into account, when Schütz made this translation. Today such a construction with a substantive and the use of ‘am’ to describe what someone does (or nearly does in this case) is common in some German slangs. But I would still call it a sign of a degenerative speech, much more so 1986-7.
So what do I make out of this? Well, maybe Schütz changed the order of the lines here to get any rhyme going at all in his translation, we don’t know. But I could at least imaging that the clear impression from the German text that lines 12 and 15 must refer to recent events was not in the original English text. That would explain as well why we have in line 4 ‘One evening Mîm stood before his den’, while later in line 15 we have ‘and thus came he out’: If lines 5 to 15 all tell us some back ground about Mîm’s past, then he does in line 15 come out of his burning ‘deep home’ after the robbery of his artefacts and not out of his ‘den’ right before he uttered his speech.
As nice as solution 3) is, we do not have much evidence for it. And if it is true, it would make the back translation extremely difficult.
Respectfully
Findegil
|